The "land"
was the property at Jerusalem. The land for which Daddy left no will. It
was done purposively, I

believe.
He built a large house, eight rooms downstairs and several low ceiling
rooms upstairs. His idea was

that anyone who went to the city and
had problems could always come home. They would have a place to return.

Letters of an Abiding Faith:

Legacy of a Slave's GrandDaughter to
her Son

written by Ella Lewis to her Son
(Rudolph Lewis)

* * * *
*

Letter

34

October 23, 1985

Dear Doc,

How are you I am not So well. But I do hope this
may Find you doing OK. I haven't heard from you since second in
September. I dont Know Whether you sent the money or not. But I
diden get it.*

I dont feel like riten But I want you to Know I
am still alive.** Listen we are starting on to get this land
straighten out.*** Are you still interested in helping us if So
let me Know right a Way.

PS I going to Baltimore the 2nd of November. So
if you answer this letter Rite to Lucinda address I hope I feel
like going. So let me hear from you, Bye.

From Mother

love you

* * * * *

Commentary

* I can’t recall why she was late getting the
money. Maybe I was tardy in sending it.

**At the writing of this letter, Mama was seventy-four. I was
indeed preoccupied with many emotional problems. I was involved
with three women: Ella Jean, Shequita Cyprian, and a poet Mona
Lisa Saloy. My head was all over the place. I was also considering
returning to school to get my doctorate in English. I also wanted
to write a biography of Marcus Christian’s life and thought the
doctoral work would sustain further work on Christian. I, however,
did not know how I would support myself undertaking such a task.
My contract with UNO ended in the spring of 1986.

***The "land" was the property at Jerusalem. The land
for which Daddy left no will. It was done purposively, I believe.
He built a large house, eight rooms downstairs and several low
ceiling rooms upstairs. His idea was that anyone who went to the
city and had problems could always come home. They would have a
place to return. If the property was in anyone’s name, that
person would undermine the purpose for which he built such a large
house. Though the house and property served that purpose for me
and Annie, they both have caused a lot of bad feelings among Mama’s
children and grandchildren who desired to gain sole control of the
house and property.

Yet, because Daddy’s legacy exists in the form that it does,
it has held the family together, though in an odd sort of way. For
both house and property are his memorials to himself and to his
life. In this sense, he still lives in our lives and we can not
get beyond that, nor should we desire to do so. My estimation is
that the situation will never be resolved, unless one of the
sisters or their descendants are willing to be bought out.
Otherwise there will never be an agreement and there will continue
to be until the last family member breathes his last breath,
family tension over Daddy’s memorial to himself. In a manner, it
is a fight over his body.

I excused myself from the struggle. I have had enough. I want
to get along with all my people. For certain I still have a
sentimental attachment to the place, for that is where I was
raised and grew up. For me, it is sacred ground and returning
there intermittently revitalizes me. For my roots run deep in that
soil. Both the living and the dead speak to me when I am there.
They speak to me of both their pains and their joys. There is no
better place in the world than at this Jerusalem. For me, it has a
much deeper meaning and significance than that Jerusalem in the
so-called Holy Land.

This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London

On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost